Maccabean Revolt (167-160 BC): Judea Against the Seleucids

The Maccabean Revolt was a Jewish uprising in Judea that began in 167 BC against the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who had outlawed traditional Jewish practice and profaned the Temple in Jerusalem. Led first by the priest Mattathias and then by his son Judas Maccabeus, the rebels retook the Temple and rededicated it in December 164 BC, an event commemorated every year at Hanukkah. The struggle continued until Judas’s death in 160 BC, and it led to the rise of the Hasmonean dynasty and an independent Jewish state.

Background

After the wars that followed Alexander the Great’s death, Judea was ruled first by the Ptolemies of Egypt and, from about 200 BC, by the Seleucid Empire, based in Syria. The Seleucids generally allowed the Jews to live by their own laws under the high priest in Jerusalem.

In the early 2nd century BC, however, Greek culture divided Jewish society. Some members of the Jerusalem elite embraced Hellenistic ways, including a gymnasium built in the city. When Antiochus IV came to the throne in 175 BC, Jason bought the office of high priest and pushed these reforms; three years later Menelaus outbid him with an even larger payment. The high priesthood had become a prize in court politics, and the conflicts that followed brought violence to Jerusalem.

Antiochus IV’s decrees

Antiochus IV invaded Egypt twice. In 168 BC a Roman envoy, Gaius Popillius Laenas, ordered him to withdraw and, according to the ancient historians, drew a circle around the king in the sand and demanded his answer before he stepped out of it. Antiochus obeyed. Shortly afterwards, amid unrest in Jerusalem, his troops attacked the city and a fortified garrison, the Akra, was set up near the Temple.

In 167 BC the king issued decrees banning circumcision, Sabbath observance and the Jewish dietary laws, and ordering sacrifices to other gods. In the month of Kislev (December) 167 BC, an altar to Olympian Zeus was placed in the Temple, called in the Book of Daniel the “abomination of desolation”. Historians still debate why Antiochus took this unusual step: whether he aimed to suppress a revolt, supported the Hellenising party, or acted for his own reasons.

The revolt begins

According to 1 Maccabees, the uprising began in the village of Modein, north-west of Jerusalem. When a royal officer ordered the elderly priest Mattathias to sacrifice to the gods, he refused, killed a Jew who stepped forward to obey, and killed the officer. He then fled to the hills with his five sons, John, Simon, Judas, Eleazar and Jonathan, and called on all who were faithful to the law to follow him.

Mattathias died in about 166 BC, and his son Judas, called Maccabeus, took command. Using the hills of Judea for ambush and surprise, he defeated a series of Seleucid forces: under Apollonius, under Seron at Beth Horon, under Nicanor and Gorgias near Emmaus in 165 BC, and under the regent Lysias at Beth Zur in 164 BC.

Rededication of the Temple

Late in 164 BC Judas’s forces entered Jerusalem, although the Seleucid garrison still held the Akra. They cleansed the Temple, built a new altar and restored the daily offerings. The rededication took place on 25 Kislev, three years after the profanation, and was celebrated for eight days. The Jewish festival of Hanukkah, meaning “dedication”, has commemorated it ever since.

Antiochus IV died in Persia in late 164 BC. In 162 BC, after Judas besieged the Akra, Lysias marched against him and defeated the rebels at Beth Zechariah, where Judas’s brother Eleazar was crushed to death beneath a war elephant he had attacked. But political trouble at home forced Lysias to make peace, and he formally withdrew the decrees, restoring Jewish religious freedom.

Judas’s last battles

The fighting continued as a struggle for control of Judea and the high priesthood. In 161 BC Judas defeated the Seleucid general Nicanor at Adasa, a victory remembered as “Nicanor’s Day”. He also sent envoys to Rome and concluded a treaty of friendship, according to 1 Maccabees.

In 160 BC a much larger Seleucid army under Bacchides marched into Judea. Many of Judas’s followers deserted, and he was killed fighting at Elasa. His brothers buried him in the family tomb at Modein.

From revolt to dynasty

Leadership passed to Judas’s brother Jonathan, who used rivalries between claimants to the Seleucid throne to win concessions. In 152 BC he was appointed high priest by the pretender Alexander Balas. After Jonathan was captured and killed in 143 BC, the last surviving brother, Simon, took over. In 142 BC Judea was freed from paying tribute, and 1 Maccabees describes it as the year in which the yoke of the Gentiles was removed from Israel. In 140 BC an assembly in Jerusalem confirmed Simon as high priest, commander and leader.

This was the beginning of the Hasmonean dynasty, named after an ancestor of Mattathias. Simon’s descendants expanded Judea’s territory and later took the title of king. Their rule lasted until Pompey captured Jerusalem in 63 BC, and the last Hasmoneans were eventually displaced by Herod the Great.

Sources and legacy

The revolt is known mainly from two ancient books. 1 Maccabees, written in Hebrew around the end of the 2nd century BC and preserved in Greek, is a sober history that celebrates the Hasmonean family. 2 Maccabees, a Greek work condensed from a longer history by Jason of Cyrene, focuses on the Temple and on martyrs such as the elderly scribe Eleazar and a mother and her seven sons. The Jewish historian Josephus retold the story in the 1st century AD, and the Book of Daniel reflects the crisis of Antiochus’s persecution as it happened.

The books of Maccabees are part of the Catholic and Orthodox Old Testament but not of the Jewish or most Protestant Bibles. Judas became a model of the righteous warrior in medieval Europe, counted among the Nine Worthies, and George Frideric Handel celebrated him in the oratorio Judas Maccabaeus (1747).

Myths and facts

The best-known Hanukkah story, of a single jar of pure oil that burned for eight days, does not appear in the books of Maccabees. It is known from rabbinic sources, above all the Babylonian Talmud, compiled several centuries later. 2 Maccabees instead links the eight-day festival to the feast of Tabernacles, which the rebels had been unable to celebrate while fighting.

It is also often assumed that the revolt was simply Jews against Greeks. In reality it was also a civil conflict within Jewish society, between traditionalists and Hellenising Jews, with the Seleucid crown backing one side.

Timeline

• 175 BC: Antiochus IV becomes king; Jason buys the high priesthood.
• 168 BC: Rome forces Antiochus out of Egypt; unrest and repression in Jerusalem follow.
• 167 BC, December: The Temple is profaned; Mattathias’s revolt begins at Modein.
• 165 BC: Judas defeats Seleucid forces near Emmaus.
• 164 BC, December: The Temple is rededicated on 25 Kislev; Antiochus IV dies.
• 162 BC: Battle of Beth Zechariah; Lysias restores religious freedom.
• 161 BC: Judas defeats Nicanor at Adasa.
• 160 BC: Judas is killed at the Battle of Elasa.
• 142-140 BC: Simon wins freedom from tribute and is confirmed as leader and high priest.

Why it matters

The Maccabean Revolt is one of the earliest recorded struggles for religious freedom. It preserved Jewish worship in the Temple, created a Jewish state that stayed independent until the Roman conquest of 63 BC, and gave rise to Hanukkah. Its memory shaped later Jewish and Christian ideas of martyrdom and resistance, and the Hasmonean era formed the background to texts such as the Dead Sea Scrolls.